My Golden Pints for 2024

Well, here we are again, same procedure as every year: the Golden Pints.

Skip to the end for the important one (assuming that anyone is interested in any of this stuff at all): the beers of the year.

Best version of a terrible style: St Mars of the Desert Rotbier 

For a few years now there’s been a bit of a buzz about a style of beer called Rotbier (literally, red beer), which supposedly is the historical local style of Nuremberg. Its signature features are a quite lurid reddish-gold colour somewhere between strawberry syrup and Campari, and a cloying sweetness in desperate need of hop bitterness, which is missing  in most of those I’ve tried. Schanzenbräu make a drinkable version, and the cherry-smoked Rotbier made by Schlenkerla in Bamberg works quite well, because the sugariness is balanced by the bitterness of wood smoke.

The best Rotbier I have had, however, does not come from Germany at all – it is made by St Mars of the Desert in Sheffield and has a full malt body, floral, bitter hops and the firm soapy foam a Franconian lager needs. Bassd scho.

Brewery of the Year: Epochal

2023 was not a good year for Epochal, with long periods of radio silence that had me wondering if founder Gareth Young had quietly thrown in the towel. 2024 saw new developments that changed all that.

Firstly Young successfully crowdfunded finance to fit out the brewery as a taproom. Secondly, he proved at the taproom that normal people would buy and enjoy beers such as the bitter, smoky White Smoke or a Brettanomyces and sulphur scented Stock Lager.

This would all be exciting enough, but Epochal has also acquired one of only two remaining Burton Union sets in the world (the other is at Thornbridge). This is a major expansion for the small brewery, but a welcome one: Young is fascinated by the union system and had been toying with the idea of building his own, so when Carlsberg Marston’s announced they were getting rid of theirs, it was an unmissable opportunity.

Epochal urgently needs to sell more beer to get volume moving through the union set. So far only one beer has gone through it – the light, slightly experimental Glasgow Pale. This is citrussy and pithy when fresh, and with a couple of months on it, develops leathery Brettanomyces aromas. I want to taste the next iteration so badger your local beer retailers for it.

Fuck up of the year: [Redacted]

This goes to the Scottish brewery who wanted to brew a Kellerbier, but used a Belgian yeast by mistake and put it into trade anyway, thinking nobody would notice. We do notice.

I have always dismissed those stories that go “this style of beer was invented when the wrong malt was delivered to the brewery”, but now I’m not so sure.

New opening of the year: Epochal Taproom, Glasgow

There were other contenders for Brewery of the Year, but no such competition for this. This really has to be the Epochal tap room.

The brewery started three years ago, and although an on-sales licence was always intended, it took until this year to obtain one due to the bureaucratic stalling of Glasgow licensing board, who would ban Hogmanay if they could.

As pub companies don’t show any signs of lessening their grip on the range of beers in Glasgow pubs, having your own tap is pretty much essential for a small brewer who wants to shift beer in volume.

But at last now we can sit by the canal in the summer drinking Brettanomyces-laced stock beer, in the shadow of one of two remaining Burton Union sets in the world.

And it works – I have probably drunk more Epochal beer this year than from any other Glasgow brewery.

Sad Closure of the Year: Windswept

I remember when Windswept started up and came from nowhere to take two awards at the Society of Independent Brewers (SIBA) competition in 2013. I tasted those competition beers and they deserved the win.

Having visited Lossiemouth, I understand now how they got their name. When I was at their last taproom event early in the year, it was absolutely jam packed with drinkers – so if there is one consolation, it’s that the reason the business failed wasn’t because people didn’t like their beer.

Best Beer Youtuber

I’ve enjoyed Tweedy Pubs’ videos about London pubs a lot.

Best Pub (Home): The Pot Still, Glasgow

The general standard of beer offered by pubs in Glasgow, it must be said, is getting worse rather than better. On one pub crawl with pals up from England, an embarrassing number of pints had to be sent back. Since the pandemic several once reliable pubs have lost their way, and rumours currently circulating suggest one iconic pub might not see the end of 2025 in its present form.

Unlike the situation down south, new openings that take beer seriously are few and far between. Hyped establishments that win praise for their authentic Laotian or Kenyan street food or range of orange wines invariably feature the same dreary Heineken and Molson Coors products on the bar.

One notable exception to the doom and gloom is the Pot Still, the renowned whisky pub where they also pay close attention to their beer. I’ve been there more often this year than any other pub in the city. There are usually three or four cask ales from the likes of Loch Lomond, Broughton and Stewart’s – and a few times a year something special as a surprise. This year it was the spectacular Ola Dubh imperial stout from Harviestoun, something I only get the chance to drink every five years or so, and later a Broughton Old Jock in an oloroso sherry cask.

Runner-up: When Koelschip Yard opened no one could have predicted it would become one of the best places in Glasgow to get a good pint of cask ale at a surprisingly low price – well, I certainly wouldn’t have. But some of the finest cask I have drunk this year, often from Thornbridge, has been in this bar, including several of my beer of the year shortlist. I’d like to see more space devoted to small local breweries, but they already do more in that regard than most Glasgow bars.

The brightest light on the horizon is that the Pot Still team have just in the last couple of weeks also taken over the once-legendary Clockwork, which has sadly been in the doldrums for a while. We can confidently expect the beer offering there to improve dramatically in the new year.

Best Pub (Away): Augustiner Mülln, Salzburg

I achieved a bucket list item this year when I finally got to the Augustiner brewery and beer garden in Salzburg (no connection to the Munich brewery). The brewery is somewhat underappreciated in beer writing, perhaps because it’s in Austria rather than Germany and Michael Jackson never wrote about it.

I shall save a more effusive description for the post about the place I still intend to write, and just say here that the atmosphere is fantastic, the beer is magical, and it’s the beer garden I’ve been dreaming of all my adult life. The evening I spent there was possibly the top beer experience of the whole year.

It also features one of the best beer snacks of the year: the Bosna, Salzburg’s answer to the currywurst. This consists of two finger-length sausages in a roll, adorned with mustard and minced raw onions and grilled in a panini press.

(Runner-up here is the Killie pie sold at the Ayrshire Real Ale Festival in Troon.)

And here we go...

Beer of the year 2024

As usual, I started writing a long list, with the intention of reducing it to a shortlist. Unfortunately, the list of beers that really blew me away this year was short enough to be the shortlist. Worse still, half of them were beers I’d had abroad.

On the bright side, I haven’t had to give a Worst Beer award this year either. And although I’ve drunk a lot of lacklustre beer this year, the stuff that was good was really good.

I decided that rather than try to select one from the shortlist, I’d just publish a Top Ten – so here we go, pop pickers:

10. Lost & Grounded Amplify Your Sound

At the Beer Is For Everyone festival in November, a brewer very nicely told me that he valued my opinion more than the popular vote for beer of the festival. Expecting the popular vote to go to some fruity sludge beer, I said I thought Lost & Grounded’s black lager, full of chocolate and burnt toast, was the best I’d had. It turned out the other punters thought so too. Quality will out?

9. Harviestoun Schiehallion

Harviestoun Schiehallion, one of the first cask-conditioned lagers to come on the market, is still a stone cold classic in my book. Its soft carbonation, slightly citrussy aroma and satisfyingly bitter finish continue to confound those who still believe that the principal attribute of a lager beer is fizziness. The pint of it I enjoyed at the Larbert beer festival in the spring was one of the finest of the year and I’m not entirely sure why I didn’t just keep drinking it all afternoon.

8. Banks's Mild

In December I made a pilgrimage to Wolverhampton to have a last pint of Banks’s Mild, which Carlsberg are discontinuing, the bloody idiots that they are. It was better than I had dared hope, paler than most milds, with a rich caramel flavour, surprising amount of hop aroma and massively drinkable.

7. Broughton 60/-

For a long time I thought that 60/- could only ever be lightly flavoured brown water and couldn’t really see such a place for such a low gravity beer in a world of £6 pints. But last year Dookit produced a splendid 60/- and this year Broughton has come out with this one, so I like to dream that someday 60/- will regain its former glory.

6. Augustiner Oktoberfestbier

Although they are very good, I am not one of those who indulge in cult-like devotion to the beers of Munich’s Augustiner brewery. Yes, bottled, their Oktoberfest lager is pretty good. However, to drink their Oktoberfest lager from a litre mug at the actual festival, tasting the rich Horlicksy malt through a thick layer of bitter shaving-soap foam, is like the difference between seeing a live band and listening to a cassette recording taped off short wave radio. Affengeil, as they say in Germany.

5. Epochal A Pleasant Tomb

Gareth of Epochal dislikes Belgian comparisons, but this beer does drink rather like a tripel at 8.4%. The signature Brettanomyces aroma and luxurious foam give way to cherry and pineapple followed by intense bitterness. I think this is the best beer Epochal has released this year, and I think Gareth might agree as it’s what he chose to drink the last time I saw him. It’s also what I’m drinking while writing this.

4. Augustiner Mülln Märzen

Dispensed by gravity from a huge wooden barrel, the Märzen served at Augustiner Mülln in Salzburg is every bit as good as the surroundings lead you to hope it will be. It’s soft and velvety, rich, golden and malty, with an undercurrent of bitterness that stops the sweet malt ever becoming cloying. Probably the best lager in the world.

3. Thomas Hardy’s Ale 

I’ve had several barley wines this year which were rather disappointing, tasting of barley sugar and not much else. The revival of the legendary Thomas Hardy’s Ale once brewed by Eldridge Pope is in another league entirely. In their wisdom, the distributors decided to make a small number of casks available, something that as far as I’m aware has never been done before. Unbelievably, the bars involved assumed they wouldn’t sell it all. The beer is smooth, complex and delicious and not reminiscent of sweeties at all. Nutty and biscuity with a certain wineyness to it, it’s full of fruity Christmas cake flavours. I do hope this becomes an annual event.

2. Kloster Reutberg Export Dunkel

I don’t remember what possessed me to take a bus ride into the countryside to reach the former monastery Reutberg, but I am glad I did. Richly malty, slightly toasty, with just a kiss of hops in the foam, this dark lager somehow manages to retain all the freshly milled malt flavours of the mash in the finished beer.

1. Kernel/Thornbridge Burton Ale

I’ve been drinking beer for 35 years now but this year, for the first time in my life, I had the opportunity to order a pint of cask-conditioned Burton in a pub. This was the collaboration between Thornbridge and The Kernel, whose fame I need not explain here. Rich and smooth, with a robust bitterness, it was the perfect winter beer when I encountered it on a dark and windy night in November.

And that‘s that!